We live in a day and age where anyone with some decent writing skills can whip up fake news for the sake of their own entertainment. One thing they always seem to forget is that false news can also be distressing.

In the wake of the worst gun massacre in modern US history, false information started spreading in the midst of the confusion on Sunday night, when official reports of shots raining down on a crowd in Las Vegas had hit social media but reliable details remained scarce. One theory that seemed to stay afloat was that there was more than one shooter on different level of the Mandalay Bay hotel.

In reality, it turned out to be one heavily-armed retiree—a white guy named Stephen Paddock without any specific political or religious aspirations. Whatever his motive, Paddock ended the lives of 59 human beings, including himself, and wounded hundreds.

But the multiple shooter stories in this case are a gateway drug to conspiracies—like ones stemming from images that purport to show muzzle flashes coming from another hotel floor during the shooting.

Thank goodness for social media, because a clip from Instagram shot during the festival a few moment before the shooting begun shows a myriad of lights flashing from the hotel that is in the middle of Las Vegas, the global capital of flashing lights.

One thing remains - when you don’t have hard evidence, do not make assumptions and post them for the world to see. You never know how it will influence people.